Toast Pops Up, Thumbs Point Down

Review by branshew

February, 29 2012

Pros: Looks, materials, fit & finish.

Cons: Uneven toasting, overly complicated for the purpose, too large.

Our old toaster finally gave up the ghost after 15 years. We were looking for an inexpensive replacement and purchased the Waring Pro WT200 2 slice machine based purely on great experience with a Waring Pro blender (which is excellent).

The WT200 is a basic 2-slice machine with an attractive stainless steel silhouette and standard pop-up toaster design. It is a bit more modern than the model we replaced. Our last toaster was a simple mechanical thermostat activated model. This one has unnecessary circuitry that seems to complicate things. It has two LED lit buttons that activate defrost and bagel settings. The defrost setting is supposed to defrost the bread, but I have found that it lightly toasts the outside while not quite getting the inside thawed. The bagel setting only toasts one side and works as advertised, but I don’t use it as I prefer my bagels toasted on both sides. It has a dial knob control to adjust the toast time/level.

We usually toast wheat bread, occasionally bagels and Pop-Tarts. The toaster works, but it toasts unevenly on both slots and I always have to stop the cycle and flip the bread around to get even toasting on both sides. I think this has to do with the position of the center of the slot being closer to the outside heater elements. The toaster toasts very quickly and 20% turn produces a nice medium brown on wheat bread. 50% setting will turn it black, and I’d be afraid that a fire could start at a full turn. You cannot lift the lever to raise the bread while it is toasting to stop like most toasters. You have to turn the cycle knob to the off position to electronically release the mechanism and pop the toast up. The bottom support is a metal wire in an oscillating wave shape. While it works okay on bread, it doesn’t work well on Pop Tarts because they aren’t supported well and tend to lean over.

Other gripes include the size. This is 1.75 times larger than our last toaster. The crumb tray is very shallow. The toast level seems to vary when the dial is set to the same spot each time (or at least what I think is the same spot - it's hard to tell as there are ni discernable dial markings that would make it easy to replacate the settings.

The toaster wins in the looks department and has a solid finish, fit, and feel, but l I find the performance of this toaster to be sub-par and that’s what really matters. This is primarily due to the uneven cooking and unnecessary hassles of using it. I don’t want to have to babysit toast or flip it and this toaster forces me to do that. Spend your money elsewhere.